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Flight school with “help” from the Dabrowski dogs

Ever since the Dabrowski dogs met the Tweet family they have taken a great interest in the development and education of the Tweetlets, Tweetil and Tweetelle.
So, of course, they were keen to help with the Flight 101 studies.

Psycho Motor Dabrowski was eager to get straight to the practical application part of the course and called out to Tweetil “Go on! You can do it! It’s easy! Flap – Flap – Jump – Flap – Flap – Flap!”

But Intellectual Dabrowski intervened with “No, there is more to learn before you start the practical sessions.
You must learn about avian anatomy and physiology and aerodynamics, thermodynamics and wind currents; and it would be interesting to learn about human attempts to simulate flight and the history of aviation and robotics and manned space flights and…”

At this point Psycho Motor lost patience with Intellectual and called out to Tweetil “You can learn all that stuff later. Just do it! Flap – Flap – Jump – Flap – Flap – Flap!”

As Tweetil began to move to the edge of the nest and flap his wings, Intellectual called out, more urgently this time, “Wait! You haven’t learnt about how to land yet!”
He breathed a sigh of relief as Tweetil stepped back from the edge.

He stated that the Tweetlets should be wearing flight suits with tinted goggles to protect their eyes, ear muffs to keep the cold wind out of their ears and extra padding in their nappies in case of a bumpy landing.

Imaginational Dabrowski, who had been talking to Tweetelle about all the wonderful things she would be able to see when she was flying, could not resist adding to the discussion about flight suits with a suggestion that they could wear life jackets in case they had to ditch in the ocean. This is what Imaginational thought they would look like wearing the life jackets, goggles and ear muffs.

Emotional Dabrowski, who has taken on a caring, empathetic, motherly role to the Tweetlets, put back her lovely head and howled inconsolably at the thought of her precious Tweetlets ditching in the vast cold ocean.

Imaginational apologised for having caused concern but pointed out that everyone needed to imagine possible consequences and called on Intellectual to produce some reassuring statistics about the comparative safety of flying as a mode of transport.

Intellectual was happy to oblige and said that this demonstrated very powerfully that much further theory needed to be studied before any practical flight sessions were attempted.
“For example” said Intellectual, with a tone of authority in his voice, “it is absolutely essential for the Tweetlets to have a complete grasp of vector co-ordinates and Newtonian physics, particularly the laws of velocity, gravity and terminal velocity before they attempt to fly.
But I can give reassurance that landing is definitely easier and more graceful for Twitter birds than it is for the Blue Footed Boobie!”

Having his fears about possible disasters somewhat allayed, Imaginational returned to suggesting to Tweetelle thoughts of the wonder of being able to fly high enough to see the fields and rivers set out like a patchwork quilt and to see patterns that would not be apparent from close up observation on the ground.

“Oh yes, and they need to study fractals and Chaos Theory as well!” added Intellectual.